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NASA blasted for botched handling of ISS budget

By Jeff Hecht

An independent review panel has blasted NASA’s handling of the International Space Station budget.

The space agency “lacks the necessary skills and tools to perform the level of financial management” needed to control the ISS budget, said the panel, chaired by Thomas Young, a retired aerospace executive.

Outgoing NASA administrator Dan Goldin commissioned the review in July after new estimates of the cost of completing the station ran &dollar;4.5 billion beyond a Congressional limit.

Young agreed with scientists that stopping construction of the ISS at that point would have had “a significant adverse effect on science”. But to stay within the limit, NASA was forced to scale down plans for the station. A planned habitation module and crew return module, which would be needed for a permanent crew of more than three people, were dropped.

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The International Space Station Management and Cost Evaluation Task Force says NASA must show it can control the cost of the shrunken three-person “core” station before considering expanding it to house a full seven-person permanent crew.

Stretching missions

NASA’s estimate of an &dollar;8.3 billion cost to finish the core station by 2006 is “not credible”, the panel adds. Young expects an additional cost overrun of more than a few hundreds of millions of dollars.

The panel has urged further cutbacks to meet the budget. These include staff reductions, stretching crew missions to six months and sending only four shuttles a year to the station.

The biggest management problem has been a focus on staying within the annual budget cap of &dollar;2.1 billion imposed by Congress, rather than limiting total programme costs, Young said.

“A cap may make you feel good for a little while, but it’s the worst way I can imagine to try to manage a programme” because it inevitably pushes extra costs into later years, raising total spending, he said.

Space science

From a science standpoint, Young said, “top priority on a space station should be to understand problems and issues in long-duration human spaceflight”.

The panel said that will require delivery of a centrifuge being built in Japan long before the planned 2008 date.

They also suggested that more manpower could be made available for science by extending shuttle visits to as long as 14 days, and by rescheduling Soyuz exchange missions so the crews overlap for 30 days, effectively doubling the crew size for short periods.